Now that we know what the effects of each of the macronutrients are on your body we can find out how many grams of protein, fats, and carbohydrates you need on a daily basis. We will start again by looking at proteins, followed by fats, and finally we will look at carbohydrates. The reason for this sequence is simple: the amount of proteins you take per day will have direct effects on the effectiveness of your training. Without enough proteins your progress will slow down, and therefore this macronutrient is the most important one of the three. Secondly we will look at fats. Even though your body can function without fats for a short while the damage to your body will be significant if you lack the needed amounts in the medium- and long-term. Carbohydrates are discussed last since this macronutrient can be used to reach your optimal level of calories on a daily basis given your intake of proteins and fats.
This article is part of a series of articles. Make sure to read the complete series to completely understand the content.
Protein
The total amount of protein your body needs depends mostly on the type of training you are doing. People who are still growing, adolescents, and people who do strength training have a higher need for protein than people who do endurance training. Under endurance training we here count everything that does not fall under strengths training, so this includes soccer, badminton, swimming, biking, running, and similar sports. Given you consume an adequate amount of fats and carbohydrates the following table shows the amount of proteins needed per kilogram of bodyweight:
Each gram of protein will give 4 calories in energy. So based on the table above and your bodyweight you can determine the total grams of protein you will need on a daily basis and by multiplying this by 4 you will know which part of your daily calorie intake will come from proteins.
In general is it better to reach the upper level of protein intake, or even exceed it, as long as you do not have any medical conditions that require you to limit your protein intake. There is almost no downside as long as you don’t reach extremes and you will even experience positive effects like better satiety, partitioning, and blood sugar control.
Fats
The total amount of fat needed in your diet is between 0.4 and 1.0 grams per kilogram of lean bodyweight. People who have very low levels of body fat can simply eat between 0.4 and 1.0 grams per kilogram of bodyweight but for people with higher levels of body fat it will be important to make a more accurate estimate by measuring your lean bodyweight. For calculating your lean bodyweight you will need your fat percentage again.
One gram of fat will give 9 calories in energy. After calculating the grams of fat needed per day you can simply multiply this by 9 to come to the total calories coming from fats in your diet.
Carbohydrates
After you calculated the total calories coming from both fats and proteins you can simply subtract these amounts from your daily need for calories to end up with the amount of calories you are supposed to get from carbohydrates. Each gram of carbohydrates gives 4 calories meaning that dividing your total need for calories coming from carbohydrates by 4 will give you the total grams of carbohydrates you should add to your diet to reach your optimal level of calories.
There is an exception on this rule for athletes. You can classify yourself as an athlete when you train on a (semi-) professional level where the quality of your training is of utmost importance. When you limit your carbohydrates intake you might experience early fatigue and feel less energetic which will result in lesser performance while training. For here we will assume you are not an athlete and we will cover the carbohydrate intake for athletes in a different article.
You now know the rough amounts of macronutrients you will need on a daily basis. Keep in mind that these amounts are guidelines only and you will need to monitor the effects this diet has on your body and mind closely to adjust it for better results. The amount given are also averages: on a daily basis it will be almost impossible to exactly reach the levels of macronutrients and calories every day as some days you will eat slightly more carbohydrates and other days you will be relatively low on proteins.
The final step is to actually create a diet, and we will take a look at that in the next article.
This article is part of a series of articles:
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